Film/TV

Video sharing tech company MediaSilo is merging with Los Angeles-based file-sharing platform Wiredrive, creating the largest video collaboration SaaS provider, with a combined 1,800-plus customers across advertising and media and entertainment.

The new, joint company has also raised $7 million from Boston-based Schooner Capital to tackle next-generation media collaboration tools for production, post-production, agencies and brands.

“We bumped into each other frequently, we’ve been in adjacent markets for a long time, and we realized how similar our platforms are, solving the same workflow issues in slightly different markets, with Wiredrive in the agency space and us in media and entertainment,” Kai Pradel, CEO of MediaSilo, told the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA). “By combining what we’re doing, instead of each side developing features that are similar, we can focus on completely new feature development, and have a better focus on the problems we can solve.”

“The scale is exciting. There aren’t many companies near that magic 2,000 customer mark,” he added. “We have 320,000 combined monthly users relying on us, and the same tooling they had yesterday they’ll have tomorrow.”

Pradel will take over the CEO role of the combined companies. “They collectively have decades of experience, and that’s going to be paramount to the enterprise going forward,” he added. Account management and customer services divisions for the companies are being combined as well, with plans to add more employees. The combined company will have offices in both Boston and L.A.

“Combined, we are able to rapidly innovate on product to provide tools that solve key problems for creatives,” said Taylor Tyng, CEO of Wiredrive. “Integrating MediaSilo’s SafeStream technology will provide an immediate benefit to Wiredrive customers by bringing on-demand watermarking to high-value video content such as Super Bowl ads and sensitive corporate content. This is just the start — there is so much more to come.”

Meanwhile, MediaSilo has added industry vet Steven Dudeck as its new enterprise success manager, where he’ll be responsible for supporting client integrations and rollouts. Dudeck is the former director of technical and post-production operations for the Oprah Winfrey Network.

“My experience with MediaSilo started six years ago when I was searching for a cloud-based media sharing service,” Dudeck said in a blog post. “At the time, I was a freelance designer and animator working with Adobe After Effects. I had just helped launch OWN the Oprah Winfrey Network, and soon after I was hired full time to take over the Post Production department, which was primarily responsible for producing around 20 to 40 on-air promos a day.

“I was immediately impressed by the set of tools MediaSilo provided, allowing us to quickly adapt our unproductive workflow.”